IS THERE WINE ON MARS?

29 August 2023

“It’s neither fish nor fowl“, they say. “Né carne né pesce” in Italian. Well, it normally means something that’s not great. Odd but dull. A compromise, a Frankenstein.
Amber wines, or orange wines, are certainly a category of their own. Not whites, not reds, and so different from rosés. And while many rosés fall in the category of… yeah, dull (sorry…), amber wines are everything but. They are properly different.

Now, sure, they’re also trendy and cool, at least in hip wine bars and among wine cognoscenti. Many regions in the world now produce amber wines as a new, innovative style; several wineries added an amber in their lineup just to make their winemaker happy. Not so in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of Italy and the neighbouring Slovenian Kras hills. Here, amber winemaking – which basically means letting the skins of a white berry variety macerating with the juice for a few days or weeks instead of removing them immediately after crushing as it’s done for whites- is a traditional style, not a trendy novelty. Here’s the spiritual birthplace of amber, both sides of the Italian-Slovenian border. A land ravaged by wars, a real divide between East and West Europe, a scarred territory where the iron Curtain used to run through. The Krast Plateau (Carso in Italian, Kras in Slovenian) is a rugged, hilly, dry landscape not far from the gulf of Trieste, famous for its deep limestone caves and subterranean rivers. These waters unify the region underground, despite of all borders, just as the common grape varieties and ancestral amber winemaking techniques unify the land over the ground.
The result of skin maceration is a white wine with extraction, aromas and even tannins like a red. Local varieties like Malvasia, Ribolla Gialla (Rebula), Pinot Grigio and Vitovska are the common grapes for amber wines, often blended but more recently proposed as varietals too, Ribolla and Vitovska in particular. They are often produced as organic wines, with minimal intervention, and in some cases they are matured in clay qvevri, following the lead of Josko Gravner, the pioneer of the georgian-slovenian cultural crossover and the reference of amber wine worldwide.

THE WINE

And so. Today we have a bottle of 2019 Skerk Ograde. This wine is produced on the narrow strip of land that connects the city of Trieste with the rest of Italy, and the vines are no more than 2km from the slovenian border. It’s a blend of equal parts of Malvasia, Pinot Gris, Vitovska and Sauvignon Blanc. Grapes are left on their skins for 10 days or so, then after spontaneous fermentation the wine ages for 2 years in barrels. 13.5 abv. It sells for 35€ approx.

Look at the color in the glass. It’s a beautiful auburn hue, like the lacquered cherrywood of my cupboard. That’s the effect of maceration with the copper-skinned grapes of Pinot Gris. That’s already a nice pairing. On the nose, the wine initially shows signs of reduction and high volatile acidity, as a whiff of apple vinegar. We need to let the wine breathe and wake up.

Skerk, Ograde 2019

Look at the color in the glass. It’s a beautiful auburn hue, like the lacquered cherrywood of my cupboard. That’s the effect of maceration with the copper-skinned grapes of Pinot Gris.

THE PAIRING

I chose to try to pair this wine with another product that is “neither fish nor fowl”, I mean, it’s 100% a fish, but it’s the least fishy of all fishes, so to say: you can order a steak or a tartare out of it. Yes: fresh tuna.

Tuna is often paired with light reds. Especially in Sicily, where tuna is cooked in rich tomato sauce, capers, olives and plenty of herbs, it’s a classic “fish with red wine” textbook exception. A Frappato, for example.
But today we want to pair two “non binary” products: amber wine and tuna. On paper, it looks like a good combo: tuna needs acidity, alcohol and my sauce with tomato and coriander calls for something aromatic.

Time to swirl and smell again. Yeah, now the wine is clean, sharp and the volatility has gone, and the intense aromatics of Malvasia and Sauvignon pop up. Orange peel, sweet spices like sandalwood, and ethereal notes as an echo of the volatility. Peach, apricot and acacia honey. It’s not funky at all, it’s actually very delicate and layered. Every sniff reveals a new note. On the palate, it’s bright, lively, but so balanced. There’s no trace of tannic grip but the texture is there. Woody notes are barely present despite the ageing, alcohol is under control. I mean, I can’t really find a fault in this wine, except maybe a shorter finish than ideal. It drinks so well. Imagine a Courvoiser-based cocktail. Plenty of orange flavors and herbs and aromatics.

It pairs the tuna well. Maybe it would fit even better a marinated tuna tartare rather than the cooked version with tomato sauce. It’s a match of two complex characters: unique but not at the extreme end of a spectrum: unique because they occupy a centre, they bridge gaps.

THE VERDICT

Skerk is a quintessential producer of amber wines. I attended the Amber Wine Festival in Trieste in June, a nice tasting event with producers from all over Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. There were uber-funky wines and others that were barely distinguishable from a neat white wine. This Ograde is spot on, a fantastic example of what an orange wine from the Italian-Slovenian border region is. And so, it’s a very solid candidate for a place in a blind tasting in one of our future events at Wine Tasting Malta!